Posts Tagged Paranormal romance

The half-vampire, half-elf is a wraith. Or half-human? Did I miss the memo? Name’s Lily, though we don’t learn that for a long time.

I am over a third of the way in (561 / 1415) and it’s still put-down-able. It’s not bad, but I am sure that better books await right now.

First-person p.o.v. mostly from Lily, but sometimes from our male lead, possibly others. Switch is sometimes a little disorienting, but the ebook formatting on my iPhone in Overdrive might also be to blame.

Romance building with Simon sunmage, his brother Guy is a templar. The names Simon and Lily seem just a little banal – is it too much to say it’s making the Whedonesque neurons fire? Lucius is an OK name choice for lead vamp. He’s good and creepy.

I like the world-building – the wraith-vampire-sunlight connection works for me – blood-addiction – but there’s something that just has not quite clicked for me. I can’t put my finger on it, but the book is not grabbing me.

Review format: Note plus links.Summary: Bryn Davis never really knew what to do with her life but after a stint in the military dealing with death and destruction on a daily basis, Bryn believes she has found her true career calling as a funeral director. Giving dignity to the dead and comfort to those left behind has given her a purpose. Unfortunately, her curiosity leaves her much closer to death than she bargained for. (from goodreads via fellow blogger)Provenance: e-book from my local library. Needed something to bring on vacation.Date Read: December 27, 2011. Review written January 2011. 😦

While reading Working Stiff, I was carried along by the confidence and competence of the writing; but afterwards, what was I really enjoying?

There’s fairly-good existential angst about being a reanimated corpse, certainly… But in some ways it’s equivalent to Monster Hunter, International dressed up as paranormal-romance plus dead people. It’s grim… but in a just-for-entertainment way. I didn’t feel like my world was expanded.

I won’t avoid future books by this author, but on the basis of this one book, I am not going to search out sequels or her other series.

…it would be a good idea to start with Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman since I remember enjoying the movie when I watched it years ago. I can’t recall the details anymore but maybe I can watch it again after I finish reading the novel. Also, Alice Hoffman has a lot of magic realism books and I’m curious about her writing.

For more than two hundred years, the Owens women have been blamed for everything that went wrong in their Massachusetts town. Gillian and Sally endured that fate: As children, the sisters were forever outsiders, taunted, talked about, pointed at. Their elderly aunts almost seemed to encourage the whispers of witchery, with their darkened house and their love concoctions and their crowd of black cats. All Gillian and Sally wanted to do was escape. One would do so by marrying, the other by running away. But the bonds they shared brought them back to each other, and to the magic they couldn’t escape.

In this book, Georgina continues to suffer the karmic fallout from cheating with her best friend Maddie’s boyfriend Seth Mortensen, who happened to be Georgie’s secret ex. As with the whole series, there is a paranormal mystery to solve and foes to vanquish. The character development of Georgie is this book’s strongest point.

I first read this four months ago, forgot to review it, and then forgot what it was about! As a re-read, I can see why: the plot starts out very, very similar to the previous books. Georgie is having strange dreams, maybe hallucinations. Something seems to be luring her to a bright light and feelings of peace and joy, almost like she’s to commit suicide. Her relationship with Seth Mortensen is off-again: in fact, Maddie strong-arms Georgie into being a bridesmaid.

This book is really about exploring Georgie’s character and moral misgivings about her role as temptress from Hell. Let’s discuss with some spoilers…